


Two Roads Converged

by BooksKeepSecrets



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen, a memorial for a very specific random NPC, she should have had more story, skyrim is a lawless unforgiving place, so here's a tiny fraction of it, the dead character is dead from the beginning, waterfalls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-04 14:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13366233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooksKeepSecrets/pseuds/BooksKeepSecrets
Summary: Here lies one who loved this waterfall, who was brave enough to fight in the most precarious of positions, who the lawlessness of Skyrim brought to her doom.We could have been friends, or enemies, but we will only ever be strangers, for I lived and you fell.I will remember, always.





	Two Roads Converged

There is a foot. It’s attached to an ankle, and through the ankle to a body. It, the foot, and the body in its entirety, is floating in cold, cold water: a lake fed by a mountain stream. (This is Skyrim— all the streams are mountain-fed. Snow-melt. There are rumors of warmer waters, elsewhere, but this body will never see them. This body never really believed in such things, when it was alive.)

(When _she_ was alive.)

The foot brushes against a rock. Rocks, and ice-melt; the great constants in life. And… um… _after_. 

It’s been in the water for an uncomfortable period of time, this foot. There might be some… decomposition. There have been some fish, with teeth. And without. But the body’s mostly intact still, and recognizable, if only there were eyes around, to notice and care. There haven’t been, yet.

At least it’s cold. Despite the body’s current state, there isn’t much… smell.

The foot brushes against the rock again, buoyed by tiny wavelets kicked up by wind; there’s a storm coming. The lake’s mostly peaceful, though; protected, calm. It’s nothing like the stream that fed it, except in temperature. Totally different creatures, if they were creatures and not bodies of water.

If dead bodies floating in lakes could have and express opinions, the body would prefer to have no personal experience floating in ice-cold bodies of water for days without end. It would much prefer to still be alive, and watching the waterfall from the (treacherous!) safety of its (her) favorite tree-trunk bridge. 

No such luck, though, and so the body floats, and decomposes, and gets nibbled. Its foot bumps against the rock… and nothing much else of interest happens, for an indefinite period of time. What is there to happen to it, other than those things that are already happening? And who is there to notice? Skyrim is large, and mostly empty, and a generally unforgiving place.

Unforgiving. No allowance for mistakes, no wiggle room, to recover from misunderstandings. That’s what landed the body here, in this freezing lake, on this day when it might storm, dead. Just a momentary misunderstanding, and also maybe some weapons. 

(Weapons had definitely been involved.)

The last few moments of the body’s former existence, when she had been a living, breathing person, were spent in a breathless, terrifying drop, the feeling of missing a step in the dark, only it kept going and going and going— and also it had been daytime, bright, sunny, a warm midsummer afternoon. The moments immediately before that had involved shock and adrenaline and her sword against a khajiit woman wielding magic and arrows (Magical arrows! Cheating!) and a sudden, dawning realization that _none of this should have happened_.

The foot brushed the rock again, and rough hands suddenly wrapped around the ankle, before the foot could bounce away. The legs were lifted out of the water, one at a time, rough hands pragmatically pulling the boots from the body’s still feet, impersonal hands searching its worn clothing for anything useful. But the weapons have long since fallen away, and the clothing has holes and the pockets are empty. The rough hands drop the the legs back into the water, but keep the boots. Those WERE good boots, before they spent days floating in ice-cold water; they may still be salvageable. The body can’t really bring itself to care, being dead, but if she were still alive, she’d have found it rather rude, to loot the boots but leave the body floating, possibly contaminating someone’s drinking water. (Or ruining someone’s lovely view of the lake.)

The waterfall had always been her favorite place to sit and think, to just _be,_ for a few minutes at a time, without having to worry about training, or chores, or dangers more serious than sunburn. She’d only found her (treacherous!) log bridge a few months ago; before that, she’d sat on rocks, climbing up and down the cliff, searching for the best places to watch the water rushing past, searching for the rainbows she’d sometimes caught glimpses of in the mist… but the tree had been best, fallen in a late spring storm, perfectly placed to appreciate the view AND the rainbows in the mist AND be nearly invisible from only a few steps away. It was HER place, just hers, until the moment a stranger barged in, and a stupid misunderstanding doomed her. A stupid misunderstanding… and treacherous footing on a fallen tree across a waterfall.

So the foot brushes the rock, now un-shod. If the body were alive, it would, impossibly, feel colder. But it’s not, she’s not, so there is nothing but cold water and curious fish-nibbles and an eternity spent dissolving into freezing mountain waters.

—

Suddenly there are hands again, furry khajiit hands, with neat claws and the possibly-imaginary hum of magic in them, and a voice that says, dryly, “I am _sworn_ to carry your burdens,” as more hands join the first two, and the body is FINALLY lifted free of the water. (The foot doesn’t even scrape against the rock as the body is moved!)

There’s a gentle glow of magic in the water, and the dry voice says, “So, we came ALL this way to take a body from a lake?” 

“No, of course not,” the khajiit says, her voice low and sad. “We came all this way to take THIS body from THIS lake.”

The dry voice does not seem to appreciate this distinction.

But the hands are respectful, careful, and suddenly there is a different sort of stone, and the waterfall is there, so close, and there is a grave dug, and the dry voice leaves, just for a moment, and there is just the waterfall, and the khajiit mage, and a dead body in a grave, with a stone marker and everything. There’s no silence, because waterfall, but there is a sense of… listening. Maybe.

The khajiit looks at the waterfall, at the grave, and says “I couldn’t find your people, so I don’t know your name. This… this is the best I can do.” Her fingers trace shapes on the stone, glowing fingers leaving letters burnt deeply and clearly into the .

(The body, being buried, and also no longer alive, has no ability to tell what the mage writes on the memorial stone.)

“I’m sorry,” she says, when she’s finished carving. “I’m sorry. This is all I could do. You deserved at least to be remembered.”

She stays, watching the waterfall in meditative silence, until the dry-voiced one returns and pulls her away.

— 

_Here lies one who loved this waterfall, who was brave enough to fight in the most precarious of positions, who the lawlessness of Skyrim brought to her doom._

_We could have been friends, or enemies, but we will only ever be strangers, for I lived and you fell._

_I will remember, always._

**Author's Note:**

> Almost 4 whole years ago, I found a waterfall in Skyrim. It was a very nice waterfall. There was a tree trunk, placed perfectly to give a wonderful view of the waterfall, and Skyrim beyond.
> 
> There was an NPC sitting on the bridge, watching the waterfall, as I approached. I thought, "Oh, wow, this is SO COOL!" and assumed that this character would have a name and a story or SOMETHING, maybe a follower I didn't know about, some minor event I'd never encountered before.
> 
> But she was just a bandit, and attacked me, and died. She didn't even have a name! Someone went to the trouble of setting up this gorgeous little nook in Skyrim, and placing an NPC here to appreciate the view, and she DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A NAME! 
> 
> As you can tell, I found this very upsetting. So here, four years(!!!) later, is my memorial for the could-have-been, the character I imagined in those moments before she stood up to fight and fell to her doom.
> 
> (Well, 3 1/2-ish years, I guess. I wrote the first version of this 7/21/2014, according to the date on the doc.)
> 
> Edit: [This post](http://ladyofnonsequitur.tumblr.com/post/69692222594/because-my-friend-wanted-to-see-the-place-i-was) on my tumblr has screenshots I took of the waterfall and its location, after the fact, if anyone wants to know roughly where it was. If you go there, let me know if you meet anyone! And if they fight you!


End file.
